**Edit: According to the article, the 'city documents' say we're looking for a "welcoming, loved front yard" ... so, grass it is.

Obviously a few more tree lined areas. Grass.... Maybe a few small areas. Hopefully a redo of the large area which is interrupted by stairs every 30 feet and some functional design that goes along with the programming for the space. As much as the space is terribly inhuman most of the time, some of the time it is brilliant. Would be good to have an inviting place for hundreds of people for the 99% of the time and still retain the large plaza for those large special events for thousands.

From its inception five decades ago, Boston’s City Hall Plaza was intended to be a hub of activity, with restaurants and areas to congregate. But that never came to be, leaving the sea of red brick in the heart of the city open to endless criticism and mockery. Along with City Hall itself, the plaza was voted into the Project for Public Spaces’ hall of shame for being “bleak, expansive, and shapeless.” Past attempts at transforming the plaza into a year-round attraction didn’t stick, but with the opening of Boston Winter in early December, the city may finally have figured it out.

Rifleman, this Mars concept has legs. The plaza is paved in red brick - got the color scheme correct. It's normally barren as hell - got the background amount of life correct. So they plunk down all these things that look like Mars colonization pods, then get one of those rover thingies from The Martian and hire local boy Matt Damon to drive it around giving tours while reprising his Mark Watney role.

And it's for Hub Week, and Boston is allegedly the hub of the universe, so why not an interplanetary theme?

If they ran with this, I'd be way more likely to buy tickets to some of the talks.

it seems the alt-right (some of them, anyway) can also be counted amongst those who dislike boston city hall (a "callous abomination... a public space so dismal that the winos don't even want to go there... a despotic building"):

really wasn't meant as a political post. the lecturer discussing boston city hall (the section of the youtube clip i pointed to) didn't seem to be analyzing the building and surrounding space in political term. anyway -- if the post somehow offended, i apologize...

I think the mbta government center rehab somewhat improved that particular corner of the plaza. The redesign of Cambridge street however, seems to have made it less pedestrian friendly with the median removed.